Just As Hot in Spanish
I just noticed on amazon.com that As Hot As It Gets is being released for Harlequin's North American Spanish imprint in May, with the cover art reversed:
Why did they reverse it and zoom in? Here's the original cover:
I think I like the Spanish cover a little better, though it looks like they did something a little weird with the sun rays and her face. While her swimsuit is cute in the original cover, it's so trendy it has the danger of looking "so five minutes ago," and maybe that's partly why they zoomed in, to cut out the swimsuit.
Oh and I just noticed too that zooming in cut out the hero's nipple. Was it too obscene for a Spanish-speaking audience? The mind boggles. It looks like they went to some effort to hide the nipple with the Fuego logo. This seems like a mistake to me. Studies show that a well-formed nipple or two on a well-formed male chest sells books.
Okay, so there is no study, but if there was, I'm sure it would support my assertion. Those Blazes that have nothing but a bare male chest on the cover are top-sellers for a reason.
posted by Jamie Sobrato @ 12:50 PM
13 Comments:
Oh and by the way, the Spanish title means "Passion of a Night" I think.
Love the cover, Jamie! I think it translates more like "Night Passion," though, as opposed to literally translating every word. Either way, totally hot!
Christina
Maybe it's "One Night of Passion." As you can tell, there are no fluent Spanish speakers around here.
I looked it up on the google language tool, and it came back as "Passion of one night." So I guess Jamie was the closest.
Why couldn't they just call it "As Hot As It Gets" in Spanish? lol
Could be that "hot" doesn't have the same sexual connotations in Spanish as it does in English, but that's just a wild guess. Titles, far as I can tell, are always changed at least somewhat on foreign editions, and are most commonly changed to something completely different and generic-sounding (at least they sound generic to me).
I wonder who actually decides what is and is not appropriate for the different languages/countries. I also wonder how accurate they are. Hmm...
The covers look good though. :)
Hey Jordan, luckily I think most of those appropriateness-types of decisions are made by the foreign offices.
I think it looks more sexual and male-dominated in the Spanish version. The latter reason, esp., is why I think they zoomed in.
Cindy
"Those Blazes that have nothing but a bare male chest on the cover are top-sellers for a reason."
Hmmm... none of the blazes i've bought have that. :D But then... I can count on my fingers the number of them that I've bought! :D And I tend to buy less-risque covers. (In other words, for me, 'clinch' covers... don't.)
It's hard to be seen in public reading a book with a naked guy on the cover. Or a naked girl AND guy, or really quite a few of the Blaze covers. You have to be pretty damn self-assured...
Tim, the chest covers don't come along that often, but when the do, the lucky author is usually quite pleased. Such covers have a way of drawing the average romance reader's eye.
Oh, and then there was Nancy Warren's infamous crotch cover. I can't remember the title of that one, but if you check out her website, www.nancywarren.net, you'll see it among her earliest books. I'm pretty sure THAT cover got her a few extra sales!
Umm... would that be "Live A Little"?? Wow. You know I had to go check out something called a Crotch Cover. LOL I'd buy that book just to have the cover next to my screen for inspiration!
Yes, Live a Little! On top of having a very, um, enticing cover, it's also a really good book.
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